


The Arrangement

by AprilFeldspar



Series: The Arrangement [2]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Star Trek AU, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-30 14:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1019629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AprilFeldspar/pseuds/AprilFeldspar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Khan's ship had been found by Kirk's Enterprise like on the TOS episode Space Seed instead of by Admiral Marcus? How would that have affected Khan's connection to a Federation already locked in a losing war with the Klingons and weakened by the destruction of such a key-member as Vulcan? With Starfleet Command desperate to get Khan's help with building new weapons, the Augment has a lot of room to negotiate and requests a guarantee of the Federation's good will in the form of Admiral Marcus' daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: yeah, because if I owned Star Trek, this is how I'd use it. Not mine; it all belongs to some big wigs from Hollywood. And possibly J.J. Abrams.  
> Rating: PG-13 of the strong kind.  
> Timeline: Star Trek: Into Darkness AU  
> Pairing: sorta Khan/Carol Marcus

All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,  
All intellect, all sense, and as they please  
They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size,  
Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare.  
(John Milton, Paradise Lost)

 

Carol stood on the balcony overlooking the still expanding city stretching at her feet, shivering slightly in the morning chill. Still she refused to go back inside just yet, nursing the awful replicator coffee in the cup in her left hand. She doubted real coffee could ever grow from the porous, inhospitable soil of Ceti Alpha V. This was her home now, this unpredictable planet with its harsh climate and sun that got too bright on most days. It was not exile, not quite, but it felt like it. On her darkest days she almost wished she had done something wrong to warrant her banishment.

The war with the Klingons had been all but lost, when Kirk's Enterprise had found the adrift ship with the cryogenic tubes, floating in the vastness of space like a deranged version of a time capsule. Dr. McCoy had revived one of the frozen men, before the crew even realized who and what he was. A remnant of a time long past. A genetically-engineered superhuman who had once ruled before being defeated and cast away. History remembered him mostly through the atrocities he had ordered after mercilessly crushing his opponents in the many battles he had thought and won. His name was Khan. True to form, he had begun his existence in 23rd century by trying to take over the Enterprise before the crew had stopped him and his newly-awakened fellow Augments. 

Kirk and his First Officer had wanted to banish him and the rest of the Augments to an uninhabited planet on the the fringe of Federation space. But Starfleet Command had had other ideas. This savage who claimed both to be better at everything than mere humans and to have been smeared in history books by his enemies, had seemed like an unexpected, albeit dangerous gift. Overruling the objections of the Enterprise officers and using the fear of being decimated by the Klingons to silence Admiral Pike's veto, her own father had proposed they took this chance to get Khan to design new weapons of war. The destruction of Vulcan had weakened the Federation, breeding ever-spreading concern of another Nero looming on the horizons. Though New Vulcan itself had initially vehemently opposed the idea, the heavy losses of a disastrous war had made the decision instead. Everybody knew that even if the Federation survived this challenged, there were no guarantees that the Romulans wouldn't invade next, bolstered by the dwindling forces of what had once been a raising galactic power. 

Times were desperate and so were the measures. However, getting Khan to help had been more difficult than Admiral Marcus had anticipated. The former warrior leader had been unfazed by the modifications in mores and technology and rapidly proved that when it came to politics, nothing ever changed. He had asked for the planet Kirk had promised, necessary equipment to make it habitable and numerous guarantees for the safety of himself and his crew. Carol had heard rumors she refused to believe then about her father threatening the Augment with the lives of his own people, to which Khan had countered with threats of going public with what he had learned about creation of an unprecedented and mostly illegal black ops division of Starfleet, which would have only further undermined the already plummeting public moral. He had also liked to remind everyone that it wasn't just Starfleet he could build weapons for. 

With the Klingon incursions into Federation space getting bolder and bolder, in the end, Starfleet Command capitulated and the Ceti Alpha system had been granted special under a protectorate that nobody even pretended it wasn't formal. Carol suspected it also made for good plausible deniability, since the new weapons base had been established on Ceti Alpha V as well. It had been around that time that she had discovered two other things: Section 31 was real and herself she was one of the guarantees Khan had requested from her father. The Augment leader had claimed it was a tradition inherited from his reign to seal a new alliance with a marriage. In truth, it was quite clear from his choice of a bride that what he wanted was a highly valued hostage.

Her duty as a Starfleet officer would have compelled her to accept, even if her father hadn't done so without consulting her and then used his rank to just order her to do it. Still it had been hard. To be written off as no more than fine print on an onerous deal by both her father and an organization, to which she had devoted her entire adult life. It hadn't been like she had been seeing someone back then – her work took too much of her time for that – but she had still felt humiliated by her giving up her entire life and career in Starfleet brushed aside like a shameful act everyone wanted to be finished as quickly and as quietly as possible. 

She couldn't even fault Khan for it. He had ruthlessly followed his own interests. He hadn't known her. He owned her nothing. He certainly acted like it. In the year that had gone by since their secret and overly formal wedding ceremony followed by an equally expedite move to the new Augment planet, their interactions were more those of colleagues than anything else. As a weapon specialist, she had been working with him on the new torpedoes and war-class ships he was developing for the Federation and she had to admit from a pragmatic point of view, his bargain with her father had been a brilliant move. He was not only incredibly intelligent but also possessed foresight and the kind of strategic thinking their ultra-polished society could never produce. He had a warrior's mind that stayed focused on the ultimate goal without concern for casualties and without any hesitation and it showed in the executive weaponry he had come up with. It was both terrifying and awe-worthy.

Their conversations were strictly business, despite the fact that she lived with him in this compound with odd-angles and eerily white walls. She had her own quarters. Khan had never expressed any interest in so much as touching her and she had been grateful for it in the beginning. In fact, aside from some mild condescension in using her Starfleet title of Lieutenant Wallace, Carol suspected he mostly forgot she existed, spending all the time left from work with his Augments who treated him with mix of affection and a respect she hadn't seen being deferred to even to the most seasoned Starfleet officers. She had an inkling these people were everything Khan loved in this world or any other. It was somewhat heart-warming to know there was something human left in this lethal, inscrutable man, who sometimes filled her with the darkest of forebodings. 

That only served, however, to deepen her feeling of isolation. She felt cast away and forgotten by anyone and everything she had ever held dear or believed in. She missed Starfleet, her old life, her friends, even her emotionally-distant father. The Section 31 agents also stationed planet-side to aid with bringing the Augments up to speed with the 23rd century and assist with the weapon projects avoided her like the plague. Khan's people mostly socialized with each other. She was permitted to send communiques back into Federation territory provided that she didn't mention her location or the arrangement with Khan. Lying to her friends had become taxing quickly and safe for the occasional messaging with Christine Chapel, she had stopped bothering altogether. 

The days had begun to blend one into the other after that, gray and hollow, while she drifted alone through corridors and weapons facilities, barely speaking to anyone. On some days she absurdly expected to disappear, on others she thought herself a ghost. She had no idea what she was supposed to do with herself in the many years to come. It had been made clear to her that there would be no leaving this place and she could foresee no utility for herself once the war was over. Khan's torpedoes and the first Dreadnought-class ship had recently been deployed for the first time, already putting a serious dent in the Klingon offensive. She supposed she should take joy and a measure of pride, since she had contributed to construction of the new weapons. Instead she felt nothing. 

She had always been a woman of action. A direct foe she could confront but she didn't know what to do with this stagnation. Sometimes she tried to console herself by thinking of how the bargain she had helped strike had helped the Federation war effort. But on her worst days that comfort was too flimsy and then she felt guilty and selfish for her doubts. She supposed things could have gone worse. Starfleet Command and her own father had obviously written her off, so, she was at Khan's mercy. She had seen some of the hardest known metals crack in his large hands, but his power didn't come just from his physical strength or the promise of brutality hidden in his towering body, but also from the way he filled any room with his sheer presence. Everything about him exuded command and confidence. The latter was a trait she had always sought to improve in herself, but the level to which Khan displayed it was unlike anything she had ever witnessed before. She wasn't certain whether she was frightened by it or if she admired his self-assuredness. 

Of one thing she had grown increasingly sure with the passing of time. There was nothing this man wasn't capable of. She fervently hoped her father or any other admiral would never attempt to double-cross him. If they did, it was the Federation that was at risk. But so far the tenuous status-quo held and the colony on Ceti Alpha V prospered. The wife of Khan's second-in-command, Joaquin, was expecting a baby and several other Augments pairs either already existed from before cryo-sleep or were in the process of forming. They also excited a great deal of fascination among the Starfleet operatives stationed here. Though initial contact had been strained on both sides, the superhumans seemed to accept Starfleet personnel a lot better than they did with her. 

Carol wouldn't have been surprised to hear of requests for settlement, if the new society continued to be as successful. Captain Kirk's report on the Botany Bay incident had been read on its way up to Command by someone who had seen fit to leak the story to the media, so, albeit the arms deal itself was highly classified, the existence of the colony was a matter of public record. She knew of enough less fortunes corners of the Federation, like the stigmatized Tarsus IV, the inhabitants of which would welcome moving under a benevolent superhuman reign.

Finishing her now cold coffee with a wince, she trailed back into her bedroom to dress for the day. She had already taken more time than she should have. Theoretically, she had no fixed schedule and nobody policed her comings and goings, but used as she was to a timed routine ever since her Academy days, she had set herself her own rules and was adamant about them. In the weapons hanger she had discovered her PADD full of good news on the Starfleet advance. Her insides flipped uncomfortably, as nostalgia squeezed at her heart. She had worked hard for her former position in Starfleet, fighting the suspicion of favoritism left and right, and dearly missed her old job. But still she was glad the Federation was finally doing better on the war front. Compared to that, her own situation seemed but a detail. Fighting back tears of both regret and happiness, she made her way to her station.

By lunch-time her elation was mostly gone. She had no one to celebrate with. The Section 31 officers continued to keep their distance even in the mess, but she overheard chatter of victory, as she struggled to swallow food that tasted like ashes in her mouth. She hadn't seen Khan all day, either, as he was apparently busy with some Augment issue the specifics of which the humans didn't have. Carol was too proud to beg for company and so she disposed of her half-uneaten meal and getting herself some tea, she went back to work. The pang of Christine's and her other friends' absence had just gotten bitterer. 

She only realized the passing of time, when her stiff muscles began to protest the unyielding position they were in. If she still were Starfleet, her shift would be ending by now. Most of the consoles in the work-area were empty as well. Stifling a sigh, she finished running the protocol she was verifying and left. The Starfleet base was purely functional with adjoining living facilities for its occupiers and it was located separately from the Augment city in the barren velds that made most of the planet's landscape. The mountains offered an even worse alternative of nothing but empty rocked haunted by extreme cold and violent winds at night. However, in between the peaks, lay narrow valleys crisscrossed by rivers and enjoying a sweeter climate that allowed for an abundance of local greenery. The colony was in the closest one of those. 

Carol usually drove there in her flying car, since the distance was not much longer than going from Tottenham Green to Croydon in London, but she had always felt like traveling between two different worlds while making this road. When she thought better of it, she realized she was. At the colony, she parked her car outside the city and opted for walking home on foot. The trek was rather short and the day was nice, the sun more forgiving here in the valley. As a day here was 39-hours long, it was still light outside. The colony was beautiful, its architecture a mix of what the planet afforded, the minimalist style the Federation consultants had brought from home and the exotic touches dating back to the century its inhabitants had initially lived in. The open spaces between buildings allowed the luxurious local flora to thrive and tiny hydroponic gardens had begun to spawn from place to place. From her limited interactions with them, she had noticed that Augments despised replicator food and preferred to make their own whenever possible. 

The unfamiliar sound of laughter floated to her ears and she turned to identify its source. The laughing woman was Mai, who looked like a goddess descended from a literati painting. The old art was lost in Carol's time, the standardizing ways of a unified social structure having long since swallowed up regional distinctions, but some of its poetry seemed to come to life anew in Mai's deceptively delicate features. Mai was walking with one of the best engineer on the Starfleet base. Carol quickly averted her eyes wanting to give them privacy. That was another reason why she predicted the colony would thrive. There was no unattached Augment without a host of suitors at the base, be they alien or human.

Her and Khan's house was located slightly outside the city on a small river terrace, nestled among dusty green and pearly plants. Ignoring the stab of exhaustion, she circled the structure to the river out back and found herself a place to sit in the shadow of a tree reminding her of a willow except that it had silvery petals instead of leaves. The planet had a meager animal life and so there was no sound around safe for the susurrus of the water. In this moment she could believe she was the only living being around. She thought back to the couple she had glimpsed on her way, to her utterly silent midday meal and her empty quarters in the building behind her. Burying her face in her hands, she allowed herself a to cry for the first time in a year.

 

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: thank you very much for reading and letting kudos!

Carol tossed and turned in the bed, searching for a sleep that eluded her despite the exhaustion of the day making her weary. She had slept like a log in bustling cities all over the Federation but was plagued by insomnia in this quiet house with a river murmuring soothingly outside her bedroom walls. It had to be the oppressive feel the structure. Some nights it was as if she were in a tomb entered alive by all the people who yearned to forget she existed. She could, of course, take sleeping aids but in order to do so, she would have to open up about her depression to the starbase doctor, who did her regular check-ups. A year ago she would have had not compulsion about it, however, her faith in the ethics of Starfleet personnel wasn't what it used to be and she didn't want the medic to report on her mental state to either her father or his Section 31 superiors.

“Lights 40%,” she said at last, slipping out of the bed. 

She ordered the shutters off the wide, plate window. Though the planet had no natural satellites and its long nights reminded her of the polar ones back on Earth in summer. It was never truly dark, instead the land was covered in a blue veil with the horizons tinged with the milky light of the alien sun. Sunken mood or not, the view outside was spectacular and she took a few minutes to bask in it. It was then that she noticed that the Augment city was better lit and much more animated than usual. It was probably a by-product of her dispiritedness, but the fact spurned a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. 

Though nobody had said as much, she was aware that the balance between Khan's people and the Federation was fragile. Maybe something had happened to offset it completely. Or maybe the Klingons had gotten wind of the Federation secret weapons facility on the planet and attacked it. Concern morphing into full-blown anxiety, she pulled at her night-clothes and quickly changed into something she could go out in. She had no access to weapons, nor could she take her communicator off-base. The thought of just how complete her isolation was stung. Should she ever be in danger, all she had in her favor was her hand-to-hand combat training and screaming. 

She tried to calm down by telling herself she was over-reacting and there were no obvious sounds of battle outside. In fact, as she strolled into the colony, all she could hear was what sounded more like a celebration than anything else, which could only mean two things: she could add her mind to the list of things she lost and it had been so long since she had been to a party, that she was beyond recognizing one. Apparently, her superhuman neighbors had not lost their zest for life, which made sense considering they had spent the past three hundred years trapped in cryogenic tubes. 

The city was centered around a covered market that reminded her of a miniature version of the Bazaar of Tabriz, which she remembered from her readings on the Augments to have been a part of Khan's reign. Once upon a time. She wondered just how daunting he found the shift from ruling over a quarter of his home planet to struggling to build something in this brave new inhospitable world with a distrustful Starfleet constantly looking over his shoulder. 

She felt like a creeper staring at the lively gathering inside from the doorway, but her feet remained rooted to the spot, refusing to carry out her decision to leave any minute now. A hand on her shoulder all but made her jump out of her skin. She whirled around on instinct and raised her left fist to defend herself. Quicker than she could see, long fingers wrapped themselves around her wrist stilling her movement. Khan took a step closer to her from the shadows and then released her arm. Carol breathed in deeply, wishing there were some way to will her heart to stop racing. 

“Did we wake you up?” he asked in a low voice, a slight, sardonic smile playing on his lips, warning her that he knew the question was rhetorical. He made no reference to just scaring her out of her mind. She supposed it was only fair giving that he had caught her spying on his people.

“No, no,” she said on one breath. “I just didn't know you had a celebration planned,” she finished regaling him with a fake smile of her own. 

He looked past her and at his friends inside, his expression suddenly more open. “We didn't know we had anything to celebrate until a few hours ago, when Joaquin and Ling's baby was born.”

His entire demeanor softened as always when he was talking about his people, the intensity in his voice revealing such fondness and pride, that for a few instants she was blind with jealousy. Here he stood, this supposedly blood-thirsty warmonger of the past, demonstrating such simple devotion to his own, that she could never, not even at her most resentful, imagine him pawning off his only family to a criminal building weapons on a barely habitable planet. She had never in the entire past year felt more awful than upon realizing that Khan might be more human than her own father.

“Congratulations,” she said in a subdued voice, looking anywhere but at him. “Would you please give them all the best for me?”

“Carol,” he said, the use of her first name startling her into looking up at him. He was studying her with the same frown of concentration he employed when working on his torpedoes. “Are you alright?”

She didn't know what was worse: Khan's charity or the fact that she was desperate enough to accept it. She nodded, eyes fixed on his sculptured face illuminated by the soft light streaming from the building behind them. It wasn't that she hadn't noted before just how handsome he was or that there was something about his fierceness that made him magnetic enough even for her restrained senses to react, but his apparent indifference had caused her to be wary of the embarrassment of a brush-off, should she try to change things between them. None of that mattered tonight. Not with the prospect of her lonely, cold bed, while others celebrated new life right under her windows.

“Yes,” she murmured. “I'm fine.” 

She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. His eyes widened in surprise and he pulled back almost immediately, brief dismay flitting across his features. Her muscles coiled in a defensive posture, as she readied herself for the trap of rejection she had set up all on her own, when he reached for her and burying his hand into the hair at the back of her head, he firmly pulled her over for a kiss of his own initiation. It seemed he wasn't about to refuse company for the night when offered to him. His kiss was an attack, aggressive and rough to the point of violence. His teeth sank into her lower lip, before his tongue pushed into his mouth, too sure and dominant to be simply exploring. Blood roared into her ears, as his free arm grabbed her by the waist, pushing her flush against the firm warmth of his body. She shut her eyes, giving in, letting him control the kiss and take over her senses. 

While her addled brain prepared to surrender to sensation, it occurred to her there was another reason to do this besides dulling loneliness: oblivion. She could lose herself in this and forget. She let out a small moan of regret, when he broke the kiss, then released her only to grab her left hand a split second later. “Come,” he commanded, pulling her with him in the relative darkness of the night.

He took her to a nearby compound, the ownership or use of she didn't know. The interior was spartan, not that their place was lavish, either. They entered what looked like a cross between a vestibule and a hall and took the elevator five levels up. From there he lead her into a tiny bedroom and ordered the lights on. With the only window in the chamber covered, she experienced a moment of disorientation that made some of the fog in her mind dissipate. Not quite ready to return to sanity, she strode towards the bed and began to undress before she lost her nerve. He keyed a code on the panel by the door, not turning to face her. 

“If you want to leave, tell me now,” he said in a controlled voice.

Carol swallowed hard, fingers pausing on the clasp of her bra. “I don't want to leave.”

# # #

Carol wondered what the protocol for the walk of shame was, upon waking up alone in a strange bed after consummating one's marriage a year or so after the overly and equally terse ceremony itself. At least, she had had a better night's rest than she had enjoyed in months, despite her sleep being interrupted several times by Khan's insistent caresses. Being with him was like being taken over by the eye of a storm, but she hadn't expected him to be considerate, too, and his gentleness disturbed her more than his brutality, because she knew herself to be worn out and disillusioned with the ideals of her world, which made her starved for the barest scraps of affection. 

She had been right to fear the return of her senses the night before, because the light of day also brought panic and all of her old suspicions about those surrounding her. Aware that dwelling would solve nothing, she dragged herself out of bed, since she was also probably late for a her work, where nobody expected her to be on time. As she dressed, her realized how ridiculous she had been, pretending she could hold onto fragments of her Starfleet life, when the Starfleet itself didn't want to hold onto her. Maybe if she just embraced the enormity of what was happening to her, she could find some measure of solace. At this point, she would even settle for resignation. 

Her investigation of her surrounding lead her to discover that the door was now unlocked and that the bedroom had to an en-suite bathroom, which she gladly used to shower and freshen up. The adjoining rotunda had floor to ceiling windows devoid of blinders and revealing a view of the central market that told her she was in the loft of a building she had never before had reason to set foot in: the political and meeting center of the Augments, where Khan spent most of his time outside the starbase in the veld. With him practically working two jobs between the two locations, it made sense he would have an apartment there as well. 

She had never stopped to consider it properly, but what they had achieved here, even with the aid of technology provided by Section 31, was nothing short of remarkable. It made her wonder about Khan's claims, she had initially dismissed as refusal to assume responsibility, of his and his people's supposedly war crimes being vastly exaggerated by his enemies. She had no illusions about what had gone on during those barbaric times, but it wasn't such a stretch to accept that the Augments had no more blood on their hands than those they had met in battle. What she could also believe was they weren't shutting her out, because they despised regular humans. After all, they had no problem interacting and even forming relationships with those on the base. Perhaps, much like she kept an eye on them, lest they went off the rails, they were equally wary of the daughter of the head of Starfleet living in their midst. 

“I took the liberty of announcing you wouldn't report for work today,” he said from behind her, seemingly enjoying sneaking up soundlessly and startling her. “I hope I'm not overstepping.”

When she turned to look at him, she saw he was dressed as if he had just come in from outside, wearing his gray cloak-like coat with raised collar that made him look every inch the warrior king of yore he was. He was regarding her somberly and she briefly wondered if he was as uncertain as she was about where they stood, before discarding the idea as silly. Khan was never not sure abut anything, much less about his glorified hostage neither he or her former colleagues would allow something as measly as her own communicator.

“Good morning,” she said with fake cheer.

His expression relaxed a fraction, as his clear blue eyes seized her up. “Good morning,” he replied seamless. “Do you want to have breakfast?” 

She wasn't really hungry, but a shared meal might help break the ice so she agreed. She had planned to tell him later that she would go to the star-base that day, only to discover that he wanted her to stay in, because, with the Augments taking it easy after the night's fest, he intended to spend the day in bed with her. The promise of oblivion of before beckoned and she let herself be persuaded. 

 

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

The sky was never truly blue on Ceti Alpha V. It became an inky shade of ultramarine at night and several variations of leaden when it rained. But on the clearest of days its normal ashen color gleamed silver. But never blue. She was lying in Khan's arms on the thick moss covering the banks of the river by their house. The afterglow of their late afternoon tryst was for rapidly fading into melancholia. The spell of oblivion sensation cast had begun to thin almost instantly chased away by guilt and shame. 

She had been sleeping with Khan for almost two months now and nothing in their interaction had otherwise changed. The distance she kept from her in front of others on the starbase, she understood. Though, when there was no chance of anyone seeing, he did occasionally pull her into empty storage compartments silencing her surprise with intimate, carnal kisses. But when they weren't having sex, neither made any attempts to spend any time with each other. At first, she had been relieved, since she thought it spared them both a lot of awkwardness. 

Then it dawned on her that the source of her relief was her not wanting anything to do with him outside the bed. It wasn't the she despised him. In fact, there were quite a few things she like about him: his brilliance, his single-minded determination and his loyalty to his people. She didn't even blame him for her situation. From a pragmatical point of view, his interest in having her as a sort of glorified hostage made sense. She didn't even fault her father and Starfleet Command entirely. After all, despite her resentment at how quick they had been to give her up, she had realized that they desperately needed someone like him in the war against the Klingons and had reluctantly agreed to marry him.

It had become obvious only of late, but she was doing exactly the same thing her former superiors in Starfleet. While they were exploiting Khan's savagery for weapon design, she was using his body to forget. She had tried telling herself that it wasn't as if he weren't getting anything out of it, but the self-loathing would not abate. She had even attempted to rationalize it as Stockholm syndrome. But she had not been abused in any way by him. He hadn't even raised his voice at her. Not even at the starbase, where she had no standing and from where he could kick her out on a whim, considering that she was no longer Starfleet. On the contrary, not counting the slightly mocking tone of their early interactions, which he had discarded long before the start of their physical relationship, he was generally even more polite to her than the Section 31 agents. 

“Do you ever miss it?” she found herself asking, not raising her head from where it was pillowed on his chest. “Earth,” she added softly. 

“Your Earth has long since stopped being the Earth that I knew and nobody, not even me and my people, misses that one,” he answered, his voice a low-baritone rumble. 

“So you're happy here?”

“Happy?” he snorted, as if the word was poison in his mouth. “I have had everything and lost it all. My crew is my family, my only home. I would do anything to keep them safe.”

Carol shuddered and his arms tightened around her, as he was probably thinking she was cold. She did feel chilled. “Are you warning me that you'd sacrifice me for them, should it come down it?” The question was rhetorical, since she had guessed as much, but still the knowledge was oddly saddening. As if she meant nothing to him. Why should she care? After all, he meant nothing to her. 

“I had not intended to disrupt your life, Carol. Nor do I want you to come to any harm now.” That was in no way a denial. She lifted her head to look at him as he spoke. His face was turned away from her, his eyes staring into the flowing waters of the river. His voice sounded as if coming from far away, even as their bodies were entwined together. “Men like your father believe not only that their cause is absolutely right and just but also that they are the only ones who know how to fight for it. I needed to find out how far he will go for his dream of a militarized Starfleet.”

Carol's mouth went dry. “You were testing him,” he choked out. “It wasn't all about getting me as a hostage.”

He turned his head to look at her. There were spatters of gold around his pupils, which only made his usually inquisitive gaze even more penetrating. “If you don't believe me, you should know that by that time I was aware of enough of contemporary technology to record some of the most compromising conversations with your father.”

“I believe you,” she said, voice tremolos. She had no reason not, but that didn't dim the hollow feeling in her chest. It seemed there was no ending to how much her father could disappoint her. She slipped out of his embrace and started pulling on her clothes strewn on the moss. She heard a rustling behind her, as he was most likely doing the same. 

“I want to listen to those recordings,” she said. She wanted to know not just the full extent of her father's betrayal of her, but most of all, the depth of his disregard for the norms and rules that held their world together. She used to believe so strongly in the founding principles of the Federation and thought it worked exactly because people like her and her father shared that conviction not just paid lip service to it. “Please,” she added, when he didn't respond. 

He was on his feet in an instant, coat draped over an arm, and towering over her. “Alright,” he agreed. He held out his hand to her and she allowed him to pull her up. Their eyes met for a few seconds and she saw compassion in his. 

It was a new low for her, being pitied by this man. It was fairly obvious that he found mere human pathetic, taking pride in his physical strength and plethora of enhanced abilities, and that he disdained Starfleet, deigning its ideals a fraud and its members hypocrites. Despite everything, it had never occurred to Carol that at least on the last account he was partially correct. Throughout her undeserved exile she had held her head high, secure in the knowledge that this deal Starfleet had made with Khan, albeit downright illegal, remained essentially a fluke brought on by the desperation of war. But above all, she believed that her sacrifice was not an empty one and that her life and career warranted the preservation of the actual version of paradise the Federation represented. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but as she walked to the house at Khan's side, she had a feeling that the content of his recordings would destroy what was left of believes. 

# # #

Carol had psyched herself to hear her father talk of her as if she were asset he was willing to barter, but nothing could have ever prepared her for the full devastating truth. As it turned out, Kirk had instantly notified Starfleet of Enterprise's discovery of the Botany Bay, inadvertently giving her father the opportunity to intercept their initial transport to this planet and kidnap the Augments, who, despite their strength, could not match the forces Admiral Marcus had at his disposal. After that, it had been easy to separate them and use the devotion these people had to each other to control them. And most importantly, to blackmail Khan into cooperation, even when that involved medical experiments bordering on torture being performed on him. 

Knowing Kirk's reputation, she wondered if he had not begun to suspect something on his own and leaked his final report on the Botany Bay himself, forcing her father to cover up his wrong doings by negotiating with Khan. There was also the equally disturbing issue that it was virtually impossible for Starfleet Command not to either have had some idea of what was going on or even if they didn't know, they had been willing to sweep the horrendous infringement of every rule they had been sworn to uphold under the rug in their haste to get a deal on new and better weaponry. 

Worst of all was the thought that the mistreatment of Khan and his crew could have continued indefinitely. Bile rose into her throat, but she forced down the nausea, as her eyes sought Khan, who was staring outside his home study window, a frown marring his profile. His back was ramrod straight and his fists at his sides clenched so hard, his knuckles had become chalky. Her revulsion switched gears and turned onto herself, as she realized she was making him listen to a play-by-play of a traumatic experience.

“Computer,” she called out, her voice wavering. She still felt like throwing up. “Pause the recording.”

Silence returned, but he didn't budge from his position at the window. She leaned back in the chair at his desk, her mind whirling. It all felt surreal, more so than the events of the past year. “I am sorry,” she finally said. “I didn't know... I am truly sorry.”

He slowly turned to face her, his expression mildly contemptuous. “If you didn't know, then why are you apologizing?”

“Because what my father did is monstrous and I'm ashamed to be his daughter.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, voice barely above a purr but still precise in its cutting impact. “What you feel is not shame. It's disillusionment.” He sneered and took a few steps into the room. “In both your families. Starfleet and the father, for whom you were never good enough for. You tried so hard to earn their approval. You gave them your undying loyalty. You worked tirelessly to graduate early from the Academy and then you got a doctorate in applied physics with a specialty seemingly guaranteed to endear you forever to their hearts. Yet it was not enough. They still discarded you without a second thought.”

A lone tear streamed down her left cheek. “Listen, I know you hate my father and Starfleet and I can certainly understand why, but can't you see how hard this is for me too? How can you be so cruel?”

“Cruel?” he spat, his voice saturated with venom. “You accuse me of being cruel, Carol Marcus.” He pronounced her name like an insult, as he quickly covered the last few paces to the desk where she sat and drew her up by her left wrist. 

“I told you, I didn't know,” she defended herself but did not resist his touch. 

He smirked and pulled her against his body. “But you knew what you were doing when you crawled into my bed for a few hours of pleasure to make you forget of your loved ones' abandonment, didn't you?”

Carol felt as if he had slapped her and tried to pull away, only to have his grip turn into a vice. He leaned so close that their breaths mingled. “No,” she said harshly. 

He let go of her instantly, but the malicious smirk didn't leave his lips, making his eyes twinkle with an unnamed emotion that only unsettled her further. She had no way of physically resisting him. She doubted armed Klingons did. 

“No, no not unless it's on your terms,” he said in a deceptively casual tone. “You will come back, though. You have nowhere else to go.”

Her stomach sank, as she began to piece together the other horrible truth about to be revealed to her. “You planned this,” she whispered, terror making her hands clammy, as the words spilled seemingly out of their own volition. “From the beginning... you made sure the Augments shunned me, you isolated me, until I became lonely enough to come to you on my own.”

He reached to stroke her cheek but she flinched away. His expression was almost thoughtful yet still carried hints of a viciousness she had yet to see in him. “To be frank, isolating you was not hard. My friends would have stayed away from you simply because of what your father did to us. I also did no incur the starbase personnel's prejudice against you. As for the rest, all I had to do was wait.” His eyes, blue as the Earthen sky in this light, bore into her. “I could break every bone in your body on your first day here, but I needed you alive so I would eventually have to reset them before infection set in. But the break in your spirit is permanent.” 

Carol felt as if the floor had been violently pulled from under her feet. She stepped back, desperately gulping on air that did not quite seemed to reach her starved lungs. “Stay away from me,” she rasped. She needed to leave and get into a shower to scrub at her skin until it bled. Maybe this way she would erase his touch from her body. 

He gestured to the door with an arched brow, as if to indicate that he was in no way holding her. Finding her feet and not caring if it looked cowardly, she fled.

 

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: thank you very much for reading and reviewing! Your insights and ideas help me greatly with developing the characters and keeping their reactions believable. Kudos, criticism and commenting of any sort is again highly encouraged, as comments are love.

The next couple of days were something out of the nine circles of hell, which was ironic, because Khan preferred Milton to Dante, if the Paradise Lost she had glimpsed on his PADD one morning in his bedroom were any indication, and she wasn't exactly keen on either. At first, she had hid in her quarters in the house, refusing to go to work or even venture outside reluctant to run into Khan and willing to make any kind of eye-contact with anyone else. Absurd as it was, she feared everyone meeting her would instantly know just how easily goaded she had been. She was also taking frequent showers, scrubbing herself so vigorously that her skin had become irritated. Still she couldn't erase the memory of his touch from her body. It felt as if he had crawled inside, branding her from within, like an invisible scarlet letter accusing her both of her weakness and the crimes of Starfleet.

She was angry, suffocating with it, angry at her father, at Starfleet, at the loss of her life-long ideals, at Khan and at herself for not seeing through his ruse. In fact, she thought she despised herself even more than him. After all, he had done nothing, hadn't laid one unwanted finger on her, hadn't even attempted to seduce her to speed his plan along. He had only set a vague trap and patiently waited for her to fall. And she had thoughtlessly thrown herself at him, latching onto the smallest scraps of tenderness he had deigned to grant her. She loathed them both for it, yet her fury came with a hefty dose of shame and self-recrimination. 

If Khan had been violent or openly hostile, her mind would have been spared. She would have been vindicated in her hatred of him, tried to resist despite the uneven odds and held onto her pride at the end of the day. But this slow deconstruction he had orchestrated, culminating in his brutal unveiling of the darkness beneath Starfleet's gleaming facade, was not something she could fight or even dismiss. She realized almost as an afterthought that his most dangerous weapon, the one no one saw but all should fear, was not his gift for strategy or the strength coiled in his muscles, but his uncanny ability to read people and manipulate them accordingly. 

Almost a week into her self-imposed isolation, she could no longer bear the feeling of the walls closing in on her and wrapping herself in a thermal cloak, she went to brave the windy day for a walk outside. She found one of the starbase shuttles hovering in front of the house and Khan, dressed in a long, black coat, standing by it. Though it was difficult to estimate what rules Section 31 could be subjected to, she was fairly certain they were not supposed to just lend out essential Starfleet property to the Augments like this. But herein lay another point her father had gotten about Khan and his people wrong. 

In order to restrict the secret of its existence to as few as possible, the base functioned only with skeletal personnel that was never rotated, therefore, stranding said personnel on a harsh planet for well over a year next door to a colony of alluring superhumans. It came as no surprise that they had all gone a bit native. Those who still harbored prejudices against the Augments had serious reasons to think twice before putting this particular development into any official report, since Carol knew for a fact that Khan monitored subspace communication from Ceti Alpha V.

There was a challenge in Khan's expression, his frown deepening the lines of his face. Carol met his eyes unflinchingly and stepped closer to the shuttle. “Going on a trip?” she asked. 

He tilted his head to the side, studying her carefully. “Yes,” he responded. “I want to take a brief air survey of an area beyond the mountains.”

Carol knew they were in the northern and warmer hemisphere of the planet, but the only extensive view she had had of it had been from the ship that had brought her here. Though she had never traveled farther than the starbase, she knew the Augments sometimes ventures into the mountains and past them to the vast woods covering the plains and plateaus sprawling on the other side of them. The Augments had also found more prairie landscape, greener than the dry one where the base had been built, and dominated by a species of large herbivores similar to the bisons back on Earth. Tests had revealed their meat to be edible and her superhuman neighbors were quite fond of it, hence multiplying their trips to the farther plains. 

“Have fun then,” she said dryly about to turn on a heel and walk away from him.

“I was about take Otto, but you can come instead if you want.”

His tone was innocuous enough, but she recognized yet another challenge. He was testing whether she was afraid of him and just how much. Carol kept her eyes on his face, lifting her chin hauntingly. She didn't fear him and even if she had, she wasn't anymore at risk in the close quarters of the shuttle than at home in the colony filled with his people or at the base, where she trusted the loyalties of no one. Besides, with his strength, the best she could do in a fight with him was probably scratch him, which she fully intended to do, should it come down to it. 

“Alright,” she said cautiously, stalking closer to the shuttle, before inspiration struck and she smiled sweetly at him.”I would love to.”

The tension between them was palpable as she boarded the craft, but she was resolved not to given in an inch. Her world might be crumbling and she might have doubts about anyone, including herself, but she would not let him manipulate and bully her further, not matter how much he had already managed to chip at her dignity. 

“Then you will keep the travel log, as Otto was wont to do,” he told her as he got in and gestured towards the seat behind the console controlling the flight and navigational settings, which he occupied himself.

Carol scowled at the coordinates marking their destination. “Ocean of Dust?” she asked not without sarcasm. 

“You'll see,” he said simply before the shuttle door sealed itself and a second later they started to float upwards. 

She returned her attention to her screen, made a few notes about the time and place of their departure and arranged the log into a more ergonomic format purely out of habit. She had noticed before that the Augments leaned towards more flowery expressions than the exclusively pragmatical ones the Federation bureaucracy preferred. Once she was done with that, she looked outside the narrow shuttle window only to be greeted by a breath-taking view of the mountains. They were both desolate and majestic in their imposing bareness. 

She saw nothing but empty, fawn rock profiled against gray skies for almost an hour until they swooped past and down to the green of the forest-covered plains. Though they reminded her somewhat of the woods of the temperate climate ones on Earth, they still looked alien enough not to allow room for the imagination to travel back home. It was all so wild and untamed that she could not help but think that this planet fitted the Augments in a way. She made more observations in her log, using the navigational compass to determine their exact location on the surface and asking Khan a few technical questions when needed.

Her job was rote enough for her mind to wander along darker thoughts. She questioned whether Starfleet Command knew the potential unleashed on this barely class M planet and was aware of the giant about to grow in the Federation's shadow. She wasn't sure what prospect worried her more. That the Augments and their descendants might build the empire denied to them on Earth starting from this small outpost or that high-ranking officers like her father might want to nip the possibility in the bud. Even two months ago she would have dismissed the latter as lunacy. Nobody in Starfleet would stoop to cold-blooded murder. Now she was less certain. 

She thought of the few months old baby in the Augment community. Last she had heard McPherson's wife was also pregnant. The ghost of Mai's laughter resounded in her ears from that afternoon Carol had seen her with her human lover. Carol didn't want to consider it, but that didn't make less likely. It could be argued that the Ceti Alpha system was outside Federation borders and the base here was manned exclusively by Section 31, which meant it didn't officially exist. If it were to disappear one day, say when the war with the Klingons ended, nobody would make inquiries about it. Even if the awakening of the Augments was now public knowledge and people like the commanding staff of Enterprise were not kept busy enough to check on them, geological disasters happened all the time on distant, perilous planets. Why should one as little known as this one be an exception?

An icy shudder slithered up her spine. She craned her neck to steal a look at Khan's profile, but the concentration coloring his smooth features gave little away. Feeling a course correction in the movements of the shuttle, she focused again on her screen but seeing she had nothing to write down yet, her attention was riveted back to the windows. There was another mountain chain on the horizon but they didn't flow towards it. The ocean filled the view instantly, as the coast line was barely a narrow sliver bordering the thick woods. 

She understood the name of the Ocean of Dust immediately. The water was of the same color as the dunes on the Sahara, giant foam-tinged tan waves battering against the shores. She scrambled to enter the necessary data into the log, before returning to the view. From the air it looked like living quick sand spinning together and stretching far past the line of the horizon.

“Do you know how large it is?” she asked as he landed the shuttle.

“Approximately the size of the Pacific Ocean on Earth,” he said and opened the shuttle door.

The beach was covered in pebbles littered with white, spiraled shells. She picked one up but found no trace of the animal once living within on it. The air didn't smell salty. “The water is sweet, isn't it?”

“Yes, but it's too saturated with minerals to be potable.”

She nodded, her thoughts returning to her dark musings from the shuttle, as she turned the dry shell over in her hands. He was standing only a foot or so from the water, staring into the distance as if he wanted to intimidate the ocean into submission, which for a few hysterical moments she suspected him of being capable of, his posture as perfectly straight and as statuesque as ever. He seemed tall as the mountains as they had just bypassed like this and somehow more powerful. 

“You're in danger,” she said out loud, tearing her eyes away the incarnation of a force of nature at her side and forcing herself to gaze at the more natural of the two wonders she was caught between. 

“I know,” he replied, voice low and dismissive.

Carol chose to ignore the tone. “I can help you protect your people.”

“In exchange for?” he asked without missing a beat. 

Apparently none of his jabs ever missed. The reply she yearned for was on the tip of her tongue, but putting a price, any price, on somebody's life repelled her to such an extent, that it almost made her physically ill. “In exchange for nothing,” she snapped and looked back to him, a move she regretted upon seeing the small, knowing grin curving his lips. 

“Carol,” he chided, his voice, smooth as a caress, elongating the vowels into satiny sounds underscoring the fine line of contempt slipped into his words. “You were so close to giving the right answer. If only your principles hadn't held you back.”

Carol swallowed past her anger but still glared at him. “I know you think everybody in Starfleet is a hypocrite for whom the Charter and the oath we take are just pretty words on paper. But they mean something to me.”

“So you are willing to betray the Federation in order to prove to yourself that your allegiance to its principles is genuine,” he said, his expression one of pure condescension. 

Carol was glad she didn't have a phaser. If she had, she would have cheerfully shot him right now. Instead she just gave him a sour look. “They exiled you for being annoying, didn't they?”

He chuckled and schooled his face back into impassivity, as he turned back to the ocean. 

“Listen,” she started again, her speech picking speed as she talked, her resolve solidifying with each word making it past her lips. “You might have the mind of a perfect warrior, but you come from a time when battles were two-dimensional. Space conflicts are three-dimensional. I have a Starfleet officer's training and I know how my former superiors think better than anyone you can wrap around your finger at the star-base, because I used to work within the system and all Section 31 knows is how to skirt it. This is my offer. It won't cost you anything and I won't reconsider it later. Take it or leave it.”

She found herself the target of one of his intense gazes. There was an equal measure of disbelief and calculation in his eyes. She held his gaze proudly, until he gave an almost imperceptible nod of agreement.

 

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

The survey had turned out to be rather routine, which probably explained Khan's ease in taking her with him rather than one of his people. He had wanted to see the Ocean of Dust for himself, since he hadn't had time to do so before, and taken some samples of the water, as initial prospecting showed that the minerals in it could be of use to some installations in the colony. The ending of their trip had been more unsettling, as Khan had flown to the northern plains and killed two bisons to bring back in the modified shuttle crates. Carol had tried not to judge, since the animals didn't seem to be anywhere near in danger of extinction. On the contrary. But one of the many advantages of synthesized food was that nothing had to die for it. With hunting illegal on Earth, it had been a little jarring to see it happen here, yet it wasn't important enough to say anything to Khan and ruin the tenuous armistice between them.

She had also brought something back from their incursion: a shell from the ocean shore. It had a tiny cinch from where she had removed a sample to investigate why its material seemed to be so hard. The excitement of the day had yet another benefit in the first fitful sleep she had had since her confrontation with Khan. The confusion and doubts had not eased in any way, but her choice to assist the colony against any attempts to eradicate it had been given her the comfort that there still were parts of her old self she could hold on to. Of one thing she was certain: she had not lied and her values were not a fraud. She had meant every word of the oath she had taken as a Starfleet officer and fully intended to stay loyal to its spirit. The Articles of the Federation were not just fragments of ideology to her; she believed in their universal value and would stand by that, no matter where she was or how great the transgressions of people she used to look up to were. She could anchor herself in that reality.

She woke up resolved to go to work, but seeing as it was too early for that, she decided to use the extra time to recap some of her combat training in addition to her morning jogging. It would have been easier if she had a sparring partner, but there were still some moves she could do on her own. So taking advantage of the warmer than normal early morning air, she left the house for that straight slip of land, where she liked to exercise, when the weather permitted. She was just beginning, when she heard Khan's voice behind her.

“Are you training for your promise to help us against Starfleet, if need be?” he asked, his voice lofty.

She spun around on instinct, taking a defensive stance with her fists thrust forward. She refrained from her rolling her eyes at him and relaxed her posture. “I am just going through my morning exercise routine,” she answered caustically. 

He came closer. “Were you taught hand-to-hand combat by Starfleet?”

“No, by St. Paul's Girls' School,” she quipped.

“That continues to exist to this day?” he replied non-surplussed. 

“Not in the same form as in your time, but essentially, yes,” she answered, as if his question had been serious. “Are you going to tell me what's wrong with Starfleet style hand-to-hand techniques?”

“It's efficient,” he rated, stopping right in front of her. In space between one heartbeat and the other she was on her back, his heavy body pressing her to the ground, her wrists pinned at her sides by fingers that felt like iron shackles on her flesh. “But predictable,” he added, releasing her and standing back up.

Carol refused to be rattled and scrambled to her feet as well. “Not to mention calibrated for the strength of not genetically-enhanced humans.”

“Strength is not the only asset in a fight.”

“So says the man with how many times the physical strength of a normal human?” she retorted, smiling fleetingly, before launching herself at him without any of the restrain she would have employed while sparring with a human, trying to tackle him. 

He caught her with ease, turning her around, and holding her by her twisted arms, his fingers digging painfully into her muscles. She gasped at the pressure but only tensed further in his grip. “Are you talking about the same lack of predictability you used when you equipped the photon torpedoes you designed with magnetic containment fields so powerful that when launched they could render the main core of a Constitution-class starship unstable?” she bit out, her words stilted by the breath stuttering unevenly out of her lungs.

He relaxed his hold but didn't let her go and she didn't struggle to get away. “No, but this is why I suggested the warp core of the new Dreadnought-class ships be modified to accommodate my torpedoes.”

Halfway through his explanation, she whipped up her right feet and kicked him in the knee with all her might. He didn't topple over, but his grip slipped enough for her to wriggle free. He jumped around to face him again, landing in her previous defensive stance. He was actually smiling at her.

“Distraction,” he muttered. “Better. Now perhaps I can teach a few things nobody already familiar with your contemporaries' combat style knows to expect.”

She thought back to their conversation the other day. “In exchange for what?”

A coy twinkle lit up his eyes. “Consider it a gift. A peace offering, if you will.”

Carol drew herself up in an effort to seem taller, feet planted firmly on the ground, as she glanced at him sideways. “So you want to teach me how to fight better as a sign of peace?” she asked dubiously.

“I thought you keen on this type of circular reasoning, Carol,” he said, pronouncing her name with that inflection she had only him heard manage and that sounded both mocking and respectful at the same time. She wondered if he was still testing her and after a brief moment of hesitation, she agreed to his proposition.

He fought with both passion and restraint, every blow calculated yet vicious, inflicting violence with as much gusto as precision. Throughout it all his expression never faltered, remaining stone-cold and unflinching, while only his eyes burnt with his enjoyment of it. But even those glimpses of his true state of mind were rare, since dark fringes of hair flew into his face as he moved, obscuring it and making him look all the more wilder for it. Carol's heart fluttered nervously in her chest more than once at the sight, enraptured with the single-minded accuracy of his responses. 

There such an physicality to him, that she was under the impression that he not only dominated their training but also the entire environment around them. It was dangerous dance, because she had soon learned that he had meant every word about the lack of routine to his fighting style. She could never predict his advances, let alone intercept them in time. He could stand perfectly still, giving no outward sign of readying for an attack, then spring into action with the speed of lighting, cutting the legs from under her, every muscle and bone in his body so in sync, that she had not once noticed even his jaw jut forward, as if it was joining the battle. 

Yet he never hurt her by accident or even let her hit the ground too hard, always catching her before he did. He seemed to know the exact extent of the force he possessed and dosed it with such accuracy, that she realized that at least in this she could rely on him. She had wisely let him set the pace, following his cue, as she tried to caught on as much as she could, unsure of whether this would be a repeated occurrence, before exertion ended their session. But her body gave up long before her will did.

She found herself sprawled on the ground, flushed and panting, her muscles shaking from the effort, dizzying waves of desire tainting the exhaustion. She had never before been this intensely attracted to someone. There had been accusations of being a cold fish leveled at her in the past, but the simple truth was that one didn't get a PhD in applied physics, learned to identity alien weaponry by sound and became a Starfleet lieutenant by the age of thirty while also having much of a dating life as well. Days on Earth were simply not long enough. 

Khan rolled on top of her, his body blanketing her pliant one. Alarm bells went off in her head, as his long, elegant fingers framed her face and he leaned purposefully, eyes trapping her like snakes hypnotized prey, and kissed her. His touch felt perfectly secure, as if he were very certain of his welcome, and his kiss held a note of domineering triumph. He had premeditated this. She knew it. Anger sending fresh adrenaline coursing through her system, she bit viciously at his lips until she tasted iron. 

He tore his mouth away, flinging his head up, rebel locks of hair fallen over his temples and forehead, a drop of blood marring his now reddened lips, as his eyes racked over her. He looked positively savage, surprisingly more so than even during their sparring, and she saw it, written devastatingly clear in his expression. Before he could get a hold of himself, he grabbed her wrists pinning them by her head, breathing heavily through his nose. She had never in her life been the focus of such ravenous intent and coming from him, it was all the more flattering. Though she suspected only he could stare at her with such intensity, as if he wanted to devour her whole. 

She had been right. He had planned this, not as part of a mind game, but because he wanted her and had gone after her by using the means most familiar to him: fighting, mock as it had been. His sharing her weakness evened the playing field. All thought of putting distance between them left her and she went lax in his grasp, letting her eyelids drop and craning her neck to lift her head in invitation. 

# # #

She stumbled in her bedroom's adjoining bathroom in a hurry, aware that she was about to be late according to her self-imposed schedule at the base. Her clothes were in dis-array, stained with dirt and crushed plants the pieces of which were still sticking to the material. Her hair was in knots and a quick survey of herself, after she had disrobed, relieved that she would also need the aid of the dermal regenerator to mend at least the most visible of the marks. There were emerging finger shaped bruises on her hips, thighs and wrists, an obvious imprint of teeth on her collar bone and purplish hickeys all over her neck. Her upper arms and shoulders were covered in scratches and her lips looked swollen and bitten. Personally, she didn't mind any of them, despite the soreness, but she would rather avoid the long looks and the gossip at the star-base. 

Before Khan had always held back, careful not to use his full strength with her, but today their intimacy had been a continuation of the fight, rough and violent to the point of brutality. As she was passing the regenerator over her skin, she realized Khan might have just made love to her for the first time. It should have terrified her, because if there were one thing more alarming than his disdain, then that was his interest, especially since in her case, he had solid reasons to hate her for it. However, she was on a high from the experience and the comfort of knowing he had been right there in the moment with her still held. For once she didn't want to weigh the consequences. She would deal with the fall-out in the evening when she was alone with him again. 

Come evening, her concern had turned out to be unfounded. They had an amicable dinner, during which they talked about the geography of the planet and he asked a few questions about her more peaceful knowledge of applied physics, since he wanted her advice on some of the installations being erected in the colony. The discussion prolonged itself well after the meal, fueled by the first wine the Augments had obtained from a species of local berries similar to redcurrant.

Carol had been surrounded her whole adult life by intelligent people at the top of their professions, still they had all been the product of the same type of education as her, sharing the same world view. While she had enjoyed the familiarity of that, she couldn't deny that it was very stimulating talking to someone who had such a radically different perspective as Khan. She didnd't even realized the passing of the hours as the topics shifted from minute and technical to general and then back to the mechanical details of life in the city outside. 

Her eyes were almost closing on their own and she was pleasantly buzzed by the time they had called it a night. When he had led her to his own bed, she thought she knew what to expect and was all the more astonished by him simply pulling her into his arms and wishing her a good night with chaste kiss to the forehead. But she was tired and the evening had been lovely and normal and she could always puzzle over his motivations in the morning. So she cuddled closer to him and let the sound of his heartbeat lull her to sleep.

 

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

That evening they had spent acting almost as if they were a normal couple rattled her. She spent the next days keeping her distance from him, interacting no more than strictly necessary at work, pretending to be engrosses in news of war during her few breaks. Said war was dragging on, lagging on in short skirmishes there and here, but overall, it had dissolved into a stalemate. Though no peace was in sight, Carol was relieved the Federation was no longer enduring the painful losses of before. 

Khan was looking into improving the shields of the new Dreadnought-class vessels, the prototype of which had already been tested. She was calibrating the navigational system of his long-range torpedoes, should they need to be fired outside previously mapped space. He also wanted her to assist with the development of installations necessary for the colony to start making commercial use of the planet's surprisingly vast resources. She had agreed and if he noticed that in between she did her best to avoid him, he didn't mention it.

Khan was looking into the future. Regardless of how the relations with the Federation progressed, the star-base would not be on the planet indefinitely. If the colony wanted to acquire further technology, all they had to do was develop a few of the many things in demand on the intergalactic market and they would find enough warp capable species out there willing to sell them just about anything. Carol didn't begrudge them their success and saw no reason not to do her part, when she could.

She needed time to process. After she had freely offered her help, even against Starfleet itself, she thought he didn't need to continue to use their intimate relationship to manipulate her into doing his bidding. But he could be doing it just for the ego trip, to be proved right about her coming back to him crawling. If that were true, then he would be making some attempt at humiliating her. However, he was doing the exact opposite. He didn't taunt her and whenever he asked for her opinion, he sounded truly interested and intently listened to what she had to say.

Still it was hard to take him at face value. She was positive that he wasn't faking his physical attraction to her, but other than that, all bets were off. She mentally wen through all her Academy psych training trying to piece together a portrait of him. Only a few months ago it would have seem preposterous, but lately she had begun to wonder if perhaps he wasn't lonely, too. If only a little. She was sure he hadn't had anything resembling a romantic connection in all the time she had known him. 

Of all the Augments, he intimidated everyone at the starbase the most and Carol couldn't say she found fault with that reaction. There was a princely quality to him and he was commanding and imperious to a degree nobody else among his people managed. She hadn't noted him giving any special preference to anyone among the Augments, either. On the contrary. He went out of his way to treat them equally, while at the same time making sure he was everything they needed at any given time: a friend, a brother, a father. Through it all, he remained their commander, but oddly enough for someone so violent and driven, his authority came mostly from the care he showed them and relied heavily on their voluntary following his lead. 

Carol, who on her father's side came from a long military tradition, could respect that. She also appreciated the fact that his door was always open for any of his people's issues, no matter how trivial, day or night. When he wasn't working tirelessly to give Starfleet weapons so it would leave the Augments alone or wasn't dealing with the many problems of the budding colony, he lived very modestly. Her own quarters in their shared house were larger and much more comfortably-appointed than his. The only eccentricity, if it could be called that, he allowed himself was the collection of old-fashioned, paperback books that had accompanied the Augments from the 20th century on board the Botany Bay. Even those he lent generously both to her and his fellow colonists. 

It wasn't out of the realm of possibility that all these responsibilities rested too heavily even on his superhuman shoulders. Maybe even he was lonely sometimes and wanted to reach out to the only person he wasn't obligated to. If one discounted the fact that they were formally married. It was something she could relate to as much, even as she feared it was wishful thinking on her part. An offer of help born out of principle could be rescinded on that just as quickly. A besotted admiral's daughter would make a much more useful tool in his mind games with Starfleet Command. At the end of the day, she simply did not know enough about him to get an inkling either way.

Khan's utter disregard for material possessions came in direct contradiction with what she knew from history about him plundering riches. Though not the most objective of sources, either, she figured it couldn't hurt to get his people's perspective, too. Anyway, she wanted to try another rapprochement with them, this one coming exclusively from her, and showed them she bore them no ill will. She started small by attempting to befriend those with whom she had to interact as part of her helping with technical matters on the colony. Then she visited Joaquin and Ling to see their baby. Khan's second-in-command was mistrustful to the point of hostility, but Ling tolerated her much better.

She had expected Mai to be more open, given her relationship with a regular human, but instead the Augment seemed to dislike her the most. It took Carol a while, but finally she put the bits and pieces of overheard information together in order to work out an explanation. While the majority of the Augments were in their thirties and even early forties, Mai was in her mid-twenties, and Khan had practically raised her since she was a little girl. So Carol suspected Mai held her responsible for the the sins of the Admiral against the only father figure the young Augment had had.

It made perfect sense. These people were the direct result of genetic engineering. They had no real families and their relations with other humans had been violent, marked by rejection and the constant threat of exploitation. All they had was each other. It was no wonder they were so tight-knit and so weary of letting anyone new in. Besides, they had such history together and so many traditions only they knew, it truly wasn't easy to fit in. Especially for her, who had been born in a radically different world. She didn't even have the edge of being a member of a secret organization operating outside the norm the Section 31 agents on the base had. She suspected it was this very sense of being an outlaw that had initially facilitated their bonding with the Augments.

Then she caught a break from the person she had least expected it. Kati had both the allure and the attitude of the proverbial ice queen. She was also in the process of updating her antiquated knowledge of botanics, which was easily and rapidly done for someone with an Augment's intelligence and memory, and in charge of maintain the colony's hydroponic gardens. Aside from that, she was delightfully quirky and ready to overlook any suspicion to quiz Carol about the most innocuous details of her version of Earth. Suddenly a dam burst open and although the Augments didn't take an instant liking to her, they did seem to accept her better, once Kati had befriended her. 

Khan didn't interfere or express an opinion on Carol's socializing with his people, obviously leaving them to make their own determinations about her, and continued to pay no heed to her avoiding being left alone with him. His calm could well come from the reality that it was now more difficult than ever for her to maintain her distance. More often than not she found herself in his office on the colony discussing one matter or the other with him. Usually they were not alone with at least Joaquin there to keep her on her toes with his blatant distrust. 

But then there was the odd exception. Like now. However, the fact that she was alone with Khan in his office in the Augment political center ranked low on his list of concerns in the face of her exhaustion and the rush to finish the calculations she was running in time. She had been working for the equivalent of a double-shift both at the starbase and on the colony all the while striving to keep up with the Augments' grueling pace and she felt as if her body was physically coming apart at the seams. She was all but mentally urging her muscles to stay bound together, even as she fought off a splitting head-ache. Her eyes were dry and gritty and she blinked all the time, trying to keep her focus on the numbers, while forcing numb fingers to glide smoothly over the console. 

His cool, low-baritone voice pointed out a tiny error she had made and Carol had to bite her tongue not to lash at him. Working with the other Augments was taxing enough, but his rhythm was just unbearable and she got frustrated a lot easier than she would have liked. If he slowed down so she could catch up, she felt insulted without even meaning to. When she sped up, she missed on minutia. It was only worse on days like this when fatigue made her slip. But there were no signs of derision on his somber face and so she swallowed her indignation, before she said something unfair and made a fool of herself.

“Why don't I finish here so you can go home?” he asked benevolently after a while. “You have been working for over eighteen hours.”

Carol had to stifle a yawn at the thought of rest. “It's fine. I'm almost done anyway,” she responded without pausing in her work.

He said nothing more but stood up and walked out of the room. Not bothering herself with the oddity of it, she braved through until an aroma she had thought lost to her wafted into her nostrils upon his return. Coffee. Freshly brewed real coffee. There was no mistaking it for the synthesized swirl that now made her stomach cramp at the mere memory. Her head snapped up as if of its own accord. He was stalking up to her, a transparent mug filled with the heavenly dark liquid in his right hand.

“I had Kati grow a few plants for you,” he explained handing her the cup. “As you can imagine, it's not a very popular drink among us.”

Carol's fingers were shaking as she took the proffered mug from him, holding it as if it were precious and in truth, it was. She pressed her palms around it, enjoying the warmth seeping into her skin. “Oh, I can imagine,” she said grinning at him. “And please don't ever take it up yourself. I can barely keep up with you as it is.”

“You are doing well enough,” he replied looking her straight in the face. It was both a realistic assessment and a compliment and Carol felt like slapping herself, because she could swear from the heating of her cheeks that she was blushing. 

“Thank you,” she said lifting the mug a bit, though her thanks actually encompassed the praise as well. 

To save herself from further embarrassment she hunched over the cup, burying her nose in the fragrant vapors and inhaling deeply. It smelled even better than she remembered. She took a sip. Normally she added a bit of sugar and the occasional cream, but right now she wanted to savor the full-bodied bitterness of the drink. She treated herself to some more before returning to her unfinished task on the console. When she looked, her calculations had already been done. 

She glanced at Khan, who looked engrossed in his own work, safe for the tiny smile underlining the perfect bow of his lips. She opened her mouth to protest, but both his gestures had been sweet, she was still so very tired and besides, if she were honest with herself, all she wanted right now was to kiss him. She settled for the third option of quietly finishing her coffee. He looked up at her again, when she was making her excuses to leave. 

His expression shifted from inscrutable to one of grim determination that made his prominent facial bones stand up in even sharper contrast. He stood, the sunset rays streaming from the window behind him emphasizing the dark of his clothes and his tall silhouette, and briskly strode to her, stopping so far into her personal space that only a breath separated them, even as he didn't let their bodies actually touch. He tilted his head so he could whisper directly into her ear, his thick, warm voice racking through her and making her skin pucker.

“Would it be easier for you if we pretended you don't have a choice?” His fingers wrapped themselves solidly around her upper arms. His nearness was intoxicating and her senses were already staggering. “After all, I have five times your strength.” His words were those of a threat, but his voice caressed them in a way that revealed their true nature: temptation. “You are here all alone, in my power.” His body finally made contact with hers, as he pushed her into the nearest wall. “And men like me dare take what they want.” 

His admission of want, backwards as it was, floored her. She wanted to pretend, just let go and not be forced to ponder intentions, machinations and end results. He had a bedroom just down the corridor, after all, and she had missed him. But it wasn't right. To either of them. She wasn't a victim and he had never given even the smallest indication that he would physically force into anything. Even now, his touch was relatively light, his fingers traveling up her arms to press gently onto her shoulders.

If there were a game of pretense she yearned to play, it was that at least something between them was real, that she was more than political tool or a willing body and that he cared at least a little. She wanted his recent gift to be genuine and not a ploy to lure her in again. It was pathetic and sad and she was despising herself for it, but none of that made it any less true. She didn't know when it had sneaked up on her, whether it was an off-shot of her loneliness or if her own attraction to him had been more of poisoned fruit than she initially believed. 

She raised her arms fully intending to push him away, but instead her hands buried themselves into his silky hair, musing it just because they could, and she kissed him desperately. Jumbled thoughts and emotions slammed themselves into her head, further confusing her, even as one emerged as clear: this was the kind of mistake she would later not be able to undo. It was him who broke the kiss, looking at her with the barest hint of a smile on his lips. 

Her knees were failing her. Luckily he chose that very instant to pull her close and squeezed her to his chest in an embrace that was surprisingly tender. His breath was once again stroking her right ear. She grasped onto him, anchoring herself in the illusory safety of his arms, waiting for his words to cut her to the bone. But none was forthcoming. Soft lips brushed her temple then slid lower to her cheek. The hands slipping under her top were slow and gentle. Carol arched into his touch, as willing to pretend now as she had once been to forget.

 

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please read & review!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: the story of The Arrangement ends here. I might write more in this universe, if requested to. Thank you for reading and reviewing! I'm glad you enjoyed my fic. Please tell me what you think of this chapter as well.

Carol perched on the slip of stone, panting with the effort of the climb, and gazed at the vista the colony made in the valley. She was alone now, Kati who had come with her on this trip, scaling higher, where the air was too rarefied for mere humans to go but Augments with their better lung capacity could venture. Her second year on Ceti Alpha V was nearing its end and the surrealisms of living here had finally begun to ebb. 

Life on a still developing colony on such a rough planet continued to be hard and between her work in the augment city and that on the starbase she scarcely got a moment to breathe. At least, the colony was coming off nicely, even if the news of the Federation's conflict with Klingons was somewhat undermining. The war had become a rather cold one and the current stalemate seemed to settle in for the long haul. 

Her relations with the Augments were improving, though some still kept their distance, fueled by the camaraderie of working together towards a common goal. From what she heard from those she had befriended, she started to understand the root of their thirst for destruction and hatred of those they considered inferior a lot better. They had been created as means to an end, treated as tools, weapons or test subjects all their lives, never as people. Like other abuse victims before them, they had rebelled against their oppressors and become themselves abusers, taking refuge in a superiority that in their case was more than a mind-frame. 

Then they had been defeated only to be awoken again by people, whose good intentions they saw no reason to trust. Unfortunately, her father had proved them right. No matter how hard she tried, she could not comprehend what had made him treat anybody so callously. Had the war embittered him? Or had the change occurred before? Perhaps subtly under her very eyes. But then how could she not have noticed anything?

What had happened to the larger than life heroic figure who used to visit her from time to time in London, where she was lived with her mother as a child? She had used to be so proud of being his daughter. He had inspired her to join Starfleet. After that, they had become close. He had progressively shut her out a short while before he had called her into his office to inform her that she was to be Khan's live-in hostage.

“Done brooding?” asked a familiar, melodic voice coming from only a few paces. She had not heard Kati's approach.

Carol leaned back against the rock wall behind her, shaking herself out of her maudlin musings. “I wasn't brooding,” she countered.

Kati scoffed. “Contemplating then?” she wondered, tone playful. “Reflecting? You're always pondering and calculating, Carol. When you're working, when you're on a break. It's not healthy.”

Her companion was only half-serious, but it occurred to Carol that she might be right, anyway, and she could use a reprieve from her worries. “What have you found?” she asked indicating the specimen jar Kati had in her hand.

The other woman raised it up for Carol to get a better view of the squirming black Arachnid inside. “Some sort of spider,” Kati guessed. “I'm taking it to Rodriguez to see what he can make of it.” 

Carol nodded eying the naked rock surrounding them. “I thought nothing could survived here.”

“Some creatures can live in the strangest of places,” Kati replied.

“Yes, they can,” Carol said more to herself than to her friend.

# # #

“So you are telling me there exists an alien race, a warrior one nevertheless, the members of which are capable of creating such sounds and they don't use them as a weapon. Or at the very least, as a torture device.”

Carol wanted to quip that it was so like him to say that, but the long-suffering look on his face was one she had never seen in all the time she had known him and she couldn't help but laugh out loud instead. Khan seemed positively depressed at her reaction but pulled himself together enough to order the computer to pause in its playing of a Klingon opera. 

“Did you go to war with these people upon first hearing this?” he asked sounding so serious that she dissolved into a fresh fit of giggles. His jaw clicked, but his eyes were sparkling with mischief, then his whole face relaxed and his smile had a hint of teeth in it. 

“A lot of Federation music critics praise its artistic value,” she said, wiping her wet eyes with the back of her hand. She couldn't remember the last time she had laughed so hard.

He winced. “Are they all deaf?”

“According to you, they might as well be, because most of them also like my brand of contemporary classic music, which you think is loud and cacophonous,” she said, sitting on the edge of what used to be her bed but could now more aptly be called theirs. He sat himself next to her, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders, long fingers digging into her sore muscles and skillfully releasing the knots of tension they found in their way. She expelled a sigh of relief. 

“I cannot help it, if I was contemporary with the greatest 20th century composers,” he boasted, one his hands slipping lower, stroking her through the flimsy material of her nightgown, and pressing lightly along the line of her spine. 

A cocoon of balmy warmth enveloped her irradiating from his touch and she reveled in it, until the idea of a retort sprang into her mind. “Wait, didn't you say Rachmaninoff is your favorite 20th century composer?”

“I did,” he confirmed. 

Carol turned to face him, regretfully dislodging his hands. “Didn't he die almost three decades before you were born?” she said in the most innocent tone she could conjure.

He didn't look in the least bit caught, but Carol was beginning to know him better than that. His arms wrapped around her pulling her into his lap. “His music was still relatively new, when I heard it.” 

“The words on your gravestone will be: I had the last word, won't they?” she said good-naturedly and he leaned forward to press a quick, chaste kiss to her mouth. The gesture wasn't sexual, just a small, spontaneous burst of affection. 

She smiled up at him, as her eyes traveled the planes of his face, unabashedly admiring him. He had once told her that nothing she saw was real and that his appearance had been artificially constructed in a time before her ancestors had been born, but still he wore it so well, it had obviously become an intrinsic part of him. There was such an immemorial, mythical beauty to him, as if he were one of the ancient gods descended from the old sagas of long-dead civilizations. She reached and traced a cheekbone with her fingers. His lids fluttered briefly at the contact. Objectively she knew his spectacular eye color was caused by an unusual case of central heterochromia, but still looking into those orbs, that were now gold-speckled emerald green shifting back to blue with the barest tilt of his head, still felt like floating through fantastic nebulae or rare worm holes. 

Her thumb grazed his lips and they trembled ever so slightly underneath it. His expression was open and relaxed and the moment was so intimate that she could almost discard the illusion mixed in with all the tenderness. Almost. The only reason she didn't was because she fervently wished it were real. She let her hand drop from his face and hid her head against his chest. 

“What's wrong?” he asked, his perceptiveness as unfailing as ever. 

“Nothing,” she dully. “Just hold me... please.”

For once he didn't comment just tightened his arms around her, his fingers combing through her hair. The safety of his embrace was a mirage, but mirages were all she had. He, this semblance of normal and this home so far away from her real one. That was her everything now. He had been right. She had nowhere else to go. But worst of all, she now had feelings for him, insidious feelings that had taken seed in her heart, when she wasn't looking, then spread like wild fire scorching everything in their way. It wasn't love or at least, she hoped it wasn't, but she did care for him. Quite a lot, in fact. 

She knew that one day he would use those feelings he was undoubtedly aware of, against her, against her father and against Starfleet, cutting her heart out of her chest figuratively and literally, if need be. Yet there she was, clinging to him, craving comfort from the man who would destroy her sometime in the future. He probably already had several plans for it. Tears prickled at her eyes but she wouldn't let them fall. Tattered as it were, her dignity was among the few things she had left. 

“They should have left me sleep,” he said suddenly, sounding almost wistful. “Kirk, your father,” he elaborated. Startled, she raised her head to gaze at him. He looked lost in thought, the softness of earlier gone from his expression. “It occurred to me the other day that it would have been more merciful if I had snapped your neck the moment you stepped on this planet,” he continued, his baritone completely devoid of any menacing quality, even as his right palm stopped above her carotid artery, his hand-span almost wide enough to encompass her throat. He didn't apply pressure and she felt no fear, though one lone tear did fall this time. 

“Inadvisable, but more merciful nonetheless,” he droned on. “Clean, quick, painless. Like falling asleep.” His hand moved up and he thumbed away the tear staining her cheek. “Don't cry, my golden, beautiful queen.”

Khan meant king. Historians had quarreled for over two centuries over whether that was indeed his given name or a title he had adopted as such. She didn't know either way. He referred to himself only as Khan and had never told her anything else on the matter.

He inclined his head to press his forehead against hers, squeezing his eyes shut, the sorrow suffusing his features unmistakable. She realized with a start that she was shaking, terror flooding her. 

“The weight of this sad time we must obey,” he whispered thickly. 

King Lear. It was one of his most beloved plays and now appropriate on more levels than one. “Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.” She finished the quote with him.

His eyes snapped open and he drew back a little, breathing hard through his nose. “The warrior of a time long past and his newest enemy's daughter,” he observed, calmer now. “It has all the marks of a Shakespearean tragedy, wouldn't you say?”

She nodded grimly. She had always guessed as much.

“I cannot give you back your freedom, Carol. I need you as leverage.” He wasn't looking at her anymore, his gaze focused somewhere over her shoulder. “But I can do one thing for you. Three words I have never before spoken in my entire life.”

He paused visibly wrestling with himself. He had gone pale, his countenance stormy and haunted by too many emotions for Carol to name. She opened her mouth to say he didn't have to do this, but then his eyes found hers again and her answer got stuck in her throat at the simple regret mirrored in them.

“Carol Marcus,” he began solemnly. “I am sorry.” 

 

~ the end ~


End file.
